Review: 'Fantastic Beasts 2' Is A Franchise-Killing Disaster

Eddie Redmayne and Katherine Waterston in 'Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald'Jaap Buitendijk and Warner Bros.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is yet another disappointment in this prequel saga to the Harry Potter series. It brings back the entire surviving cast of the first film and then separates them for most of the picture. It undoes almost every major plot turn of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them to the point of rendering that film narratively irrelevant. It is so focused on the grand five-part epic that it forgets to tell a story for this specific installment. It is a rambling, shiftless middle-chapter of a five-part saga where absolutely nothing of consequence happens or is revealed until the final reel, turning this franchise into the cinematic equivalent of a “paced for the binge” Netflix series.

Opening in much of the world this week courtesy of Warner Bros., director David Yates and writer J.K. Rowling’s $200 million-budgeted sequel is clearly designed to be a Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in terms of setting the template for the ongoing narrative and upping the action after a comparatively stand-alone (and exploratory) first movie. It gets off to a thrilling start, with the diabolical Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) pulling off a bloody escape from a flying prison carriage. The focus is again on Eddie Redmayne’s Newt Scamander, and this eccentric zoologist makes a refreshingly unconventional focal point for a fantasy action saga as a good man who must decide between passively rejecting evil and actively fighting for good.

The rest of the supporting cast is mostly excessively passive or exposition machines. Dan Fogler’s Jacob and Alison Sudol’s Queenie show up quickly enough only to arbitrarily break up and spend most of the movie apart from each other. Katherine Waterston’s Tina Goldstein is back to being an Auror but is otherwise demoted to “Newt’s love interest” after being something of an equal in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The core story involves Dumbledore (Jude Law, nearly stealing the movie by default with only a few major scenes) recruiting Newt to track down Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller, magically not dead after “dying” in the last movie) before the Grindelwald recruits him or the Ministry of Magic kills him.

Alas, the movie spends its middle 90 minutes crawling in place, with most of its narrative energy spent teasing Credence’s true heritage, as if this was an M. Night Shyamalan-worthy plot twist. It’s the biggest “Who cares?” thud since Franz Oberhauser divulged his real name in Spectre. This would be less of an issue if this wasn’t the film’s entire reason for existence, at the expense of all other narrative strands. It would be even less of an issue if the movie didn’t twist itself in knots, including giving Zoë Kravitz’s Leta Lestrange the most convoluted backstory I’ve ever seen, for the sake of its twist. It’s such a waste of movie that it’ll make you resentful of The Empire Strikes Back.

This is tragic since the movie looks glorious and has a few creative action sequences. Johnny Depp doesn’t get much to do, as he’s playing a more real-world version of Voldemort. He gets a great third-act monologue where he converts folks to his side by essentially telling them the truth, but otherwise, he is an idea presented for further study in the next sequel. The notion that he is supposed to represent Donald Trump is silly, since A) Voldemort was himself already a Hitler-like genocidal demagogue and B) Grindelwald is far more articulate, eloquent and disinclined to self-aggrandizement than our current president. No matter your thoughts on the morality of Depp starring in these films, he is quite good here.

Jude Law is wonderful as a younger Dumbledore, offering hints of his “for the greater good” duplicity and all-but-outing himself as totally gay for Grindelwald. Prior comments about how much the movie would acknowledge Dumbledore’s homosexuality notwithstanding, it’s there clear-as-day for those who are paying attention. The characters are certainly aware of what he means when he notes that he and Grindelwald were “closer” than brothers in their younger days. The only mystery when Albus looks into the Mirror of Erised and sees himself and a younger Grindelwald (again played by Jamie Campbell Bower) is why Gellert aged so much worse than Albus. I’d congratulate the movie for using Law and Depp sparingly if the rest of the movie were better.

But Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is not good. It misses the core appeal of the Harry Potter saga, specifically in terms of putting character before action and world building. The hardcore Harry Potter mythology didn’t get down and dirty until the end of The Goblet of Fire, by which point we were fully invested in the destinies of Harry, Hermione, Ron and the others. Folks didn’t flock to the Harry Potter movies because of the action scenes, the overall plot or the plot twists, but rather because they liked spending time with the characters and liked watching them interact. This film splits up its core characters and barely lets them play together while being a feature-length prologue for the third movie.

Imagine The Last Jedi that is 94% focused on who Rey’s parents were, or an Amazing Spider-Man 2 that spent all of its time unlocking the secret of Peter Parker’s dead parents, and you have some idea of how Crimes of Grindelwald goes horribly wrong (and the supporting cast barely reacts to the film’s post-climax status quo). I’d like to think that the damage can be rectified now that the set-up is (hopefully?) done. Redmayne remains an engaging hero and I imagine there is more fun to be had for Dumbledore and Grindelwald essentially reenacting Heat. But that won’t matter if general audiences and casual fans feel burned by 134 minutes of Table-Setting Theater and this franchise goes all Divergent: Allegiant in 2020.

Crimes of Grindelwald wants to be the Wrath of Khan (or even Saw II) of its franchise. But the misguided and narratively inessential tenth chapter in the J.K. Rowling saga is closer in spirit to Star Trek: Nemesis. Actually, it’s closer to X-Men: Apocalypse, as it’s a shockingly misguided and misshapen sequel that focuses on the wrong story threads and wrong characters to the point of endangering the entire franchise going forward. Whether or notFantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald makes money relative to the $814 million haul of the first film (it’s projected for a $250m global debut, compared to $220m for the last one), it’s a crucial miss that may have long-term consequences for the movies yet to come.

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I've studied the film industry, both academically and informally, and with an emphasis in box office analysis, for 28 years. I have extensively written about all of said subjects for the last ten years. My outlets for film criticism, box office commentary, and film-skewing ...